It all reminded Jane that having a baby was not that miraculous. Any two fools could do it.
* * *
—
Who played the organ at Freida’s wedding? Trick question! Freida played the organ at her own wedding, pounding out Bach’s Arioso, while peering nervously over the wooden rail of the organ loft at Trinity Missionary Church.
Jane was the maid of honor, and she smiled up at Freida as she walked sedately down the aisle to where Mr. Hutchinson and the minister waited. Jane was too pregnant now for any of her regular clothes, but it seemed she was not quite pregnant enough for maternity dresses. She wore an emerald-green maternity dress, and it hung so loosely in the front that Jane thought she looked like a choir member.
The last notes of the organ died away, followed by the muffled taps of Freida’s heels on the carpeted stairs before she burst through the swinging doors and dashed to her place at the altar, her cheeks Crayola-pink and her veil slightly askew. She was wearing a ’50s-style white satin wedding dress, and her bosom heaved slightly against the bodice seams, while the crinolines holding her skirt out rustled like static. But Mr. Hutchinson looked in awe of her as he took her hand.
Jane glanced over to where Duncan sat, hoping to exchange an amused smile with him, but he was watching Freida with the same awestruck expression as Mr. Hutchinson. Jimmy sat next to him, wearing an ill-fitting blue suit that made him look like a convict on work release from prison. Jane glanced away from them, feeling suddenly disloyal.
The reception took place in a wooden lodge just outside town. The main room was spacious and inviting, wood-paneled, with an enormous gas fireplace in the middle, and clusters of soft leather armchairs and padded benches surrounding it.
“Are you sure you don’t mind sort of directing everyone?” Freida asked Jane for the third time as they hung up their coats in the cloakroom. They had a shared dislike of wedding coordinators.
Jane squeezed Freida’s arm. “Not at all. You go enjoy yourself.”
From then on, Jane stopped being the maid of honor and became a sort of point person or liaison officer. In fact, she not only stopped being the maid of honor, she nearly stopped being human and became just a helpdesk in a giant green dress. She had to tell the caterers to start serving and direct the florist on where to put the arrangements and the staff which table to designate for gifts. Everyone had so many questions! What time could the florist pick up the vases? Should the cake be refrigerated? Where could the waitstaff unpack and change? Where should they park the van? When should they pour the champagne? How many guests were staying overnight? Where should they put the gifts? Where had Freida registered? Did they need drinks tickets? Was there going to be music? Why was Freida wearing such pointy shoes?
That last question was from Gary.
“Oh, well, the shoes match her dress,” Jane said slowly. “It’s all kind of retro.”
Gary looked doubtful. “Do they hurt her feet?”
“They probably do.” Jane wished that Aggie would come retrieve Gary, but Aggie was across the room, talking to Freida.
“Is Freida going to change her last name to Hutchinson?” Gary asked.
“No, she’s going to stay Freida Fitzgerald.”
“That’s inconvenient,” Gary said sternly. “Two names to remember.”
“Well, you only ever call Freida by her first name,” Jane said. “So I don’t think all that much will change.”
“What if I write them a letter, though? Two names to put on the envelope.”
“Yes,” Jane said. “I suppose.”
“What if their names don’t even fit on the envelope—”
“Gary, if you’ll excuse me, I need to manage the guestbook,” Jane said. She may have agreed to be an ad hoc wedding coordinator, but she wasn’t going to be Gary’s personal minder.
Because Freida and Mr. Hutchinson were both teachers, many of the guests were also teachers, and Freida had also invited her whole roster of private music pupils, so many of the guests were students and their families. (One student, Robbie Gentry, played the old upright piano in the corner, an endless loop of three Beatles songs.) The teachers could not resist flexing their authority muscles and addressing the students by their full names: “Timothy Hubbard, don’t leave your glass there,” and “Maddie Copeland, please hang up your coat.” The students looked morose; there could be no anonymous bad behavior tonight. But Jane thought the children were getting their unknown revenge because none of the teachers dared get drunk in front of so many parents. The waitstaff circled endlessly with trays of red and white wine, but most people had only one or two drinks. Mr. Sutton, the high school principal, was sitting in a corner staring into a glass of club soda as though it contained all the world’s sorrows.
Those lucky enough not to be students or teachers—or pregnant, Jane thought—were gathered in a merry group closest to the fire. Kelvin Dunn and his wife were there, and Terry Howard, who did Jane’s taxes, and Helen Swanson from Jane’s book club, and the Millers and the Andres and the Thornhills. Duncan was there, too, sitting between Jimmy and Aggie. Aggie kept throwing back her head with laughter and saying, “Oh, certainly! Certainly!”
Jane tried to circle close enough to hear what they were talking about, but just then Marjorie Graves touched her arm and asked if she could find someone to pick up old Mr. Merriweather because his family seemed to have left him back at the church.
Jane said she could send the Millers’ nephew, and then someone asked her what the alcohol percentage in champagne was, and someone else asked her if any of the hors d’oeuvres were gluten-free, and Marie Henderson asked what the difference between an hors d’oeuvre and an appetizer was anyway. Patiently, Jane answered all their questions. She replaced the pen by the guestbook, and restacked the wedding gifts, and at the prearranged moment, she retrieved Freida’s mandolin from the back room and handed it to her.
Then, finally, Jane got to sit down on the arm of Duncan’s chair. Freida sat in her own chair a few feet away and played “Jerusalem’s Ridge” and “Can the Circle Be Unbroken?” and “Bringing Mary Home.”
Then she said, “This one is for my husband!” her voice cracking on the word husband like a scientist who had discovered a new and exciting species.
Jane knew Freida had been debating between “Love of My Life” or “Grow Old With Me,” and she waited to hear which song she had decided on. But Frieda played a song Jane had never heard before.
“This song is called ‘True Love Will Find You in the End,’ ” Freida said, and everyone murmured appreciatively. Of course Freida would know the perfect song to play! The mandolin notes rose and fell in soft, rapid arcs while Freida sang.
This is a promise with a catch,
Only if you’re looking can it find you.
People began exchanging looks—what sort of wedding song was this? Who sang about promises with catches on their wedding day? But to Jane it made perfect sense. Freida was forty-eight, and Mr. Hutchinson was not only her first husband, he was her first serious boyfriend. Freida was singing not to Mr. Hutchinson, but to herself, promising herself that she would not stop looking, not stop loving, not take anything for granted. On the last verse, Freida’s voice increased, not in volume but in intensity. Her voice and the mandolin’s voice braided together and floated toward the ceiling like the smoke from the sweetest possible fire. Mr. Hutchinson brushed away a tear, and Jane didn’t blame him one bit.
A little pause followed as the last mandolin note seemed to linger in the air, then Aggie leaned forward and said, “Jane, I believe there’s too much thyme in the stuffed mushrooms.”
Jane sighed.
Freida and Mr. Hutchinson cut the wedding cake—vanilla with raspberry filling and white-chocolate ganache frosting—and Jane helped serve it, toddling around in her smock-like green dress. She brought Duncan a small slice and sha
red it with him. Duncan had reached the state of drunkenness where he patted her approvingly after every sentence.
“How’s it going, Janey?” Pat.
“Aggie, send Gary to the bar, will you?” Pat.
“Jim, you go over and tell Mrs. Moeller that I’ll have her coffee table done by Christmas. Valentine’s Day at the very latest.” Pat.
Jane excused herself and went into the kitchen. Plates with more slices of cake were lined up on the counter, and she took two of these and went into the little storage room at the back and sat on a folding chair. She ate the cake in large satisfying bites, feeling the sweetness of the frosting fizzing against the roof of her mouth. Now that she was sitting down, she could feel the baby fluttering and kicking. She cupped her stomach with her hands: Hello, you. Through the window, she could see the cars in the parking lot all waiting patiently for their owners like horses tied outside a saloon, the wintry pinkish sky cold and unpromising.
The reception continued until Freida took on the wide-eyed, tilted-head look of a shell-shocked soldier, and then Jane gathered everyone to see the married couple off. Freida clasped both of Jane’s hands, whispering, “You are the best friend! Oh, wasn’t it a perfect day!”
She pressed her cheek against Jane’s, and Jane felt that startled surprise you feel when a bride touches you and you remember that there’s a person under all the bridal trappings. She helped Freida into her red wool coat. Mr. Hutchinson offered Freida his arm, and they went out into the parking lot with all the guests calling farewell and throwing rice, although they hardly needed to, since the snow had started and provided its own cold confetti.
The guests departed in large groups, then in small groups, and then one by one. The caterers began clearing up the dishes and packing up the kitchen. Duncan and Jimmy loaded the wedding gifts into the car while Jane retrieved the toasting flutes and the guestbook, and boxed up the rest of the cake. She said good-bye to the staff, and gave the caterers a small envelope of cash.
Duncan came in to help Jane put on her coat, and then escorted her out to the car, although she would be the one to drive home. Duncan smelled so strongly of alcohol that Jane wondered if he had put the gifts in the right car.
“That was a fine wedding,” he said to Jane. His eyes, shiny with wine, looked over his scarf at her with no more intelligence than the eyes of a stuffed deer head. “A fine, fine wedding.”
“Yes,” Jane said. “Yes, it was.”
She wanted two things only: a hot shower and her softest pajamas. There’s a limit to how good a time you can have at a wedding reception without alcohol. There really is.
* * *
—
Obviously, they weren’t going to name the baby Glen, but what would they name it? Boys’ names were difficult because Jane felt there were really only about five decent boys’ names in all the world—Lachlan, Magnus, Oscar, Beau, and Macon—and Duncan didn’t like any of them. Girls’ names were even more problematic because Jane didn’t want to give the baby the name of any of Duncan’s old girlfriends, which meant they couldn’t choose Ann, Annabel, Angela, Barbara, Brandy, Candy, Mandy, Mindy, Lindy, Cindy, Trudy, Judy, Jody, Jill, Jessica, Julie, Jennifer, Gina, Christina, Irina, Regina, Sabrina, Susan, Suzanne, Susannah, Sherry, Barrie, Carrie, Kerry, Mary, Michelle, Isabelle, Noelle, Gabrielle, Janelle, Danielle, Debbie, Denise, Darlene, Darcy, Marcy, or Vicki. And those were only the names he could remember! Lynn, Linda, Leslie, Lori, Laura, Leah, and Lana were also out because Duncan had had a weeklong affair in 1996 with a woman whose name he never learned but whose initials were believed to be LTR based on the monogrammed towel she’d left behind. It was a nice towel. Jane liked it.
Another problem was that Jane didn’t want to pick a name that would remind her of a particular student—and she had taught so many students. How could she name the baby Cody when that made her think of Cody Matthews and his constant runny nose? Or Magda, when that made her think of Magda Rutherford and her mean, narrow eyes? Or Dylan McMahon and his spitballs? Or Selena Cantrell with her endless, mindless chatter? Or Merrill Yarbrough, who scribbled on all the pages of his schoolbooks? Or Thalia Tompkins, who pinched the other children so hard she left bruises? Or Augustus Ervin, whose pink-framed glasses and scared expression had always made Jane feel like crying? Or Dalton Dupree, who always smelled so strongly of pickled cabbage? (Dalton was a current student, and Jane’s heightened sense of smell made it unbearable to be in close quarters with him—it was possible that he would leave the second grade unable to group numbers because she couldn’t stand to go over his math worksheets with him.) And then there were the names of students that were so overused that Jane couldn’t remember how many had passed through her classroom: Jacob, Emily, Michael, Olivia, William, Max, Alexander, and Sophia. Those names were holograms to her, little more than blurred outlines.
Duncan said he’d like to name the baby Harriet, after his mother, if it was a girl, and Jane was, as always, startled anew by the fact that Duncan had a mother. She had never been able to imagine him as a child or a teenager. It seemed he had always been as he was now: lean, handsome, confident, slightly worn. When they were first dating, Duncan had so seldom spoken of his mother that Jane had assumed she was dead! It was only after a year that she realized his mother was actually alive and living in Escanaba.
Jane had met her shortly after she and Duncan had gotten married. Harriet was in her seventies, but the years seemed to have only polished her, sculpting her cheekbones and thinning her skin to flawlessness. She had short ash-blond hair with long bangs and a raspy smoker’s voice.
“I’m so sorry, but I’m afraid Duncan is just like his father,” she’d said to Jane. (Unlike his mother, Duncan’s father actually was dead, had been for twenty years.) “His father was charming as the devil and had those same sexy brown eyes, but I’m afraid he was awfully flighty and a dreadful flirt. Kindhearted and loving, yes, but so selfish and irresponsible, really, and terribly vain.”
But Jane couldn’t help noticing when they all went out to dinner that Harriet touched the waiter’s arm when placing her order and tilted her wineglass in a silent toast with a man at another table, that she ordered the most expensive entrée on the menu and didn’t reach for the check, and that she smiled at her reflection in the mirror wall next to the table at least twice. No, Jane didn’t think it was his father Duncan took after.
Yet Jane liked Harriet a lot. “Look at you, prettier every time I see you!” she always said. “And you’re always so sweet-natured, too, with such a lovely smile. I wish I could be more like you, more patient.” When they’d told her about the baby, she’d said, “Jane, I absolutely know you’re going to be the most wonderful mother. I always feared Duncan would have a child with Aggie. Can you imagine? The poor baby would probably be afraid to cry for fear Aggie would say how disappointed she was. The baby would probably never learn to roll over for fear of wrinkling the sheets.” (Harriet had great disdain for Aggie; it was possibly the best thing about her.) “But now Duncan has you and you’re going to have a baby and I just know for a certainty that you’re all going to be happy, happy, happy.”
How could you not like such a person? The name Harriet suited Jane just fine.
* * *
—
They decided to spend Christmas with Jane’s mother in Grand Rapids, mainly so her mother wouldn’t decide to spend it with them in Boyne City. Who knew how long she might stay?
“You’ll be very welcome,” her mother said when Jane called to tell her. “Will you be bringing Jimmy with you?”
“Of course we’re bringing Jimmy,” Jane answered irritably. “I would never leave him alone on Christmas.”
“I’m just asking, dear!” her mother protested. “No need to fly off the handle. I thought maybe he had other plans.”
“Well, he doesn’t,” Jane said grimly. Of course he didn’t. Who would he have plans w
ith? He had no other family. Jane’s mother was responsible for that.
They got to her mother’s house midafternoon on Christmas Eve. Jane knew that the house was exactly the same size it had been last time she visited, but it seemed smaller. It seemed smaller every time. One day she’d come here and there’d be no house at all.
Duncan brought his toolbox along with his suitcase as they walked up the path. “Saves me a trip out to the car,” he said.
Jane’s mother opened the door looking festive in black pants and a green-and-red striped sweater. “Merry Christmas!” she caroled. “Come on in!”
As soon as Duncan helped Jane out of her coat, her mother looked at her stomach and said, “Mercy, but you’ve gotten large.”
“Mom—”
“Are you sure you’re not having twins?”
“It’s just that Jane’s so slender,” Duncan said smoothly. “The baby bump is more obvious.”
“Mmmm.” Jane’s mother sounded noncommittal. “Now, Jane, you show Jimmy to his room and, Duncan, I wondered if you’d mind shoveling my walk and driveway? I hire a neighbor boy, but he doesn’t do a very thorough job. He doesn’t chip away at the base layer and I don’t feel safe unless I’m walking on dry ground.”
“We just got here!” Jane protested. “And it’s twenty degrees out.”
“I don’t mind,” Duncan said quickly. Jane knew he probably didn’t—besides, her mother would be unlikely to follow him outdoors to supervise.
Early Morning Riser Page 18
